S3507c Boot problem

‎11-12-201202:28 PM

The slimline S3507c was working fine; all of a sudden, when powered up, there is no video on the screen. This is not a monitor problem. There is no "no signal" message, the monitor light immediately goes to amber. If I unplug the vga cable, the "no signal" info shows on the screen. Other symptoms and behaviors: The power light comes on and remains blue; the fan is on and the hard drive is spinning. There are no beeps or other indications of POST hardware problems. My experience says that the on-board video graphics is not working; but I am hesitant to buy a vga card as I read some others did so and it didn't fix the problem. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

S3507c Boot problem

‎11-27-201202:58 PM

Sean,

Thanks for the reply. I have already been to that page; tried appropriate suggestions. I have since tried an external video card, same symptoms--no bios video at all; no post code indicators (beeps or power button light). I also have reseated ram, tried one at a time, switched them to see if there is a ram problem. I also have deinstalled the cpu, checked pins, etc., reinstalled with artic silver. Still nada on the screen. Fans spin, I'm pretty sure the hard drive is spinning up. I have removed the hard drive and ran diagnostics and chkdsk /r on it by hooking it up to a remote usb adapter on another computer.

I guess my real question is: "Why isn't there even a post indication of the failure?" The only answer to that is either the bios is fried or there is some other issue with the motherboard. Even if the on-board video burned out, it would seem to me that installing a (brand new) PCI-E video card should work. If ram or the cpu were the problem, post codes would reveal that.

I have hunted through forums, including this one and have found many angry users of the Slimline series from HP. The motherboard and power supply are totally proprietary and cannot be replaced with main stream hardware. The motherboard is no longer available. Other mini-itx boards have standard power supply connectors; can't be used with the HP power supply. Shame on HP to not even support this product.

I serviced this computer about a month ago; physically cleaned inside of case and fans (major dust buildup), removed viruses and spyware, did disk cleanup, defragged, chkdsk, etc. The machine was running very well at that time; no problem with booting. One month later, black screen; no boot. I'm sure there is an issue on the motherboard, at this point. I need to know some alternatives to just scavenging the machine for spare parts and tossing the rest. Any thoughts you might have (ie. inside HP info regarding the S3507c) would be appreciated. Now, it's a personal thing with me, to get this thing working again--I've never had one that can't be fixed.